


Reflection of a Dream

by boxxed



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 21:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19449436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxxed/pseuds/boxxed
Summary: Ronan dreamt the night horrors and the night horrors tried to kill him. In which Ronan remembers those caught in the aftermath.





	Reflection of a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is barely more than a stream of consciousness that I tried to edit into something cohesive. It helped me work through some thoughts that have stayed, for the most part, off page. Also I wrote this on my phone so there may still be mistakes; if there are: sorry, I guess.

He's dreaming a memory. It's not his own memory, he knows this because he can see himself lying on the bed. He's not sure it's someone elses either, though, because who would have been standing here, then, watching. Maybe it is his memory, only outside.

Gansey was there, sat next to the hospital bed, saying something Ronan wouldn't listen to, head turned to the side so Gansey couldn't see his face. He didn't need to, though; he had seen the bandages wrapped around Ronan's arms and the tubes and the blood pack pumping when he'd still needed it. He'd been there when the nurse had listed the emergency treatment and when the mental health practitioner came for a visit. They had told them that Ronan wasn't getting out of care unless he agreed to ongoing treatment. He'd refused the pills point blank. But under Gansey's careful coaxing over the course of a few days, he'd eventually agreed to the councilling.

 _It was an accident_ didn't mean all that much when faced with the cold, hard truth of a medical chart hanging off the end of your bed. The laserations, the alcohol poisoning, the stomach pump. The story was barely legible but still written in a blue ballpoint pen.

Gansey would ask _why_ another fifty times before leaving. _You know he wouldn't have wanted this_ , he said once. He wouldn't sleep that night. Ronan doesn't need to follow him home to see that. He's pretty sure he could. That in this dream he isn't confined to his own memories and his own eyes. But he doesn't want to see what Gansey does when he gets back to Monmouth; he's been privy to enough of Gansey's insomnia for one lifetime. And he's been all too aware that he was the cause of some of it.

Then Gansey is gone and Declan was there. Mathew too. Declan sat on an uncomfortable hospital chair, legs crossed, hand rested on fist, simmering. He looked like he wanted hit something. Ronan, probably. But Matthew was present, so he didn't. He let Matthew, who'd brought grapes and a balloon and a photo frame featuring the three of them from a family trip a few years before, chatter away. For the first time in days ronan had stopped feeling numb. Instead, he welcomed the return of the burning self-hatred that meandered through his veins. Matthew deserved better than this. This ugly world and his ugly brother with his ugly scars.

He needed to leave. So Ronan told him to, not kindly, not like he should have for Matthew and Declan had been too happy to oblige.

Ronan doesn't mean to follow but he does. Possibly he has less control over what he sees than he originally thought. The real Ronan, the present, dreaming one, is two paces behind his dream brothers, heart breaking every time Matthew sniffles. It doesn't help to know that this is a memory, or a memory of a memory of a time gone by, he's angry at himself for being the source of Matthews tears. Declan walked beside him, silent and Ronan is angry at him too. He should have said something comforting or scathing, anything to show that this had meant anything to him at all; even if it was just one more reason to write Ronan off.

Ronan keeps following as they get in Declans' old Volvo, a car even more depressing than the dream and he drives with them to Algionby. Even now he wants to leave. It's not that this place hurts him anymore, just that he'd rather leave it in the past where it belongs so he can't stew on old memories. The irony of the thought is not lost on him. Matthew climbed out of the car, more sullen than Ronan has ever seen him. He tries to follow but the dream won't let him. He hopes that Matthew had someone to make him laugh. He stays in the car but now he's in the passenger seat and Declan drove. And drove. And drove. And drove a little more.

He left little Henrietta and headed out to a rural part of rural West Virginia and, on a road that was more dirt than road, he pulled over. He opened the door, climbed out, closed it behind him, gentler than what it feels like he should have. He sunk down against the titanium and with his head in his hands, he cried. Wracking, hair pulling sobs. He punched the floor, one, two, three times. He got up. He kicked a tree and when it didn't kick back he punched it for good measure. It reminds Ronan that they're brothers, that they came from the same place. There was blood on his knuckles and mud decorating his usually impeccable suit. He leant his forhead against the bark and stayed there for a long time.

Ronan wonders if Declan had known it was the dreams, the night horrors, that had got him. He wonders if it would have made any difference. The night horrors might have comforted ronan, given him an out. It had been dreams that had tried to kill Ronan, but they were Ronans dreams. He'd wanted them to come. Begged them. Created them. Ronan wasn't a liar but he'd lied to himself. About this. It had been a years since he accepted that once upon a time he had wanted to die, but he could never quite admit that he'd ever followed through, even if unsuccessful.

He wants to tell Declan he's sorry, for what it's worth. Maybe when he wakes up. What's the phrase? Better late than never?

He's at he hospital again. The tubes were gone but the bandages remained. Adam was there. Dream Ronan was asleep. At least, he was pretending. Or half pretending. He was drifting. Real ronan knows this because he remembers.

Adam was wearing his tattered uniform and was doing his homework while sat by the window. He was using a small but practical reading lamp that had originally been situated on Ronan's bedside table. Ronan watched as Adam scrawled across his notepad, every movement had repinquished a new shape of tendons and each time he had returned his hand to the other side of the page a new wave of loathing washed over ronan until he was drowning in it. He didn't stop watching. Ronan remembers this, too because he never really stopped. He doesn't remember when it siezed hurting, only that it did.

It was past visiting hours but Adam was quiet and Ronan was the seventeen year old boy who tried to kill himself so the staff had let him stay for an extra hour or so. The notion had never occured to Ronan, Adam being there late that night, like they were friends in a real way at the time. Ronan had never given Adam any reason to care, had made sure of it. And yet, there he was, sitting by Ronan's side knowing going home that late would have consequences that he would spend the rest of his life shaking off. Consequences that still make Ronan feel sick. Eventually, though, the staff couldn't bend the rules any further and Adam, he was told gently by a sympathetic nurse, had to leave.

Ronan closed his eyes. He hadn't dreamt for days, the pain killers he was on didn't let him, but he still didn't want to sleep, not while Adam was still in the room. It lulled him anyway and the words exchanged between him and the nurse had become white noise. Ronan knows what they were saying now. Mostly the nurse reassured and admired while Adam watched Ronan's shapeless form. _Can you save him_ , he'd said. When the nurse had told him the worst had already passed, Adam nodded as if that was remotely what he meant.

Before he left, he made his way to Ronan's bedside and touched his shoulder for the briefest moment. At the time Ronan had thought he'd imagined it, but that hadn't stopped the skin beneath his hospital gown from burning where Adam's fingertips had pressed. He had wished the night horrors had done a better job.

Ronan watches Adam leave. This is the moment he truly wants to wake up. He knows, distantly, that if he does Adam will still be there and he'll be able to breath again. Instead he's forced to face himself. The hospital has disappeared and all that is left is him and a boy in a bed. Free from distraction, he knows he has to forgive the boy he had been. Everyone else did long ago. In the dream he has no body so he can't look down and see the faint reminders that still marr his arms. Battle scars. A war on Ronan's life fought inside his own head; it had raged on for years. He'd been victorious. Eventually.

He paces without a body to the other side of the bed so he can see his face. He'd forgotten how young he was back then, and looking now, he finds his heart breaking once again. He was asleep, for real by then, but there was still the shining wet of a shed tear trailed down to his nose.

 _I'm sorry I tried to kill you_ , says Ronan and he remembers that too.

He wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> 🥀


End file.
